as sober,
but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all. At last I
began to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too
much alone. I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old
or lean. I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even
a little better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father's
house. I looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. I
thought of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I
was as fresh to see as when Dennis first came to me. I could see no
difference. There was a clear pool not far away under the little hills
where the springs came together. I used to bathe in it every morning and
dry myself in the sun; and my body was like a child's. That being so,
should my own man turn his head away from me day or night? What had I
done to be used so, less than two years after I had married!"

She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. "Shame stings a woman like
nothing else," Madame Bulteel said with a sigh.

"It was so with me," continued Dennis's wife. "Then at last the thought
came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept
coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some
good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the
Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two,
as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was
lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening. I
was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman
somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M'sieu' came and
put a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him
till he touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his
soul."

"His soul--the jackal!" growled the old man in his beard.

The woman nodded wearily and went on. "For all of ten days I had been
alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian
helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak
when there's something tearing at the heart. So I let M'sieu' Marchand
talk to me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that
Dennis did not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it
except me, he said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper,
if he had spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I
think, so I went to old